PH133 Introduction to Philosophy: Moral Philosophy

Week 7: Utilitarianism and the Good Life

1. Introduction to Moral Philosophy

The 3 branches of moral philosophy:

a) Metaethics is concerned with questions about the nature of morality and the status of our
moral claims.

Case: There’s a man who has an awful secret – he kills people for fun. He’s killed quite a few
already, but he never stops to think about his reasons and why he’s doing what he’s doing. He
just gets enjoyment out of it and he has no plan to stop.

Metaethics deals with questions as such:

 Is it true that his actions are morally wrong?
 Is the truth of the claim that his actions are morally wrong relative to some time and
place or what some people think? Or is it objective and holds independently of what
we think and of the circumstances we are in?
 How do we know that the claim that his actions are morally wrong is true?

b) Applied ethics is concerned with questions about what to do regarding very specific
issues, using “philosophical methods to treat moral problems, practices, and policies in the
professions, technology, government, and the like” (Beauchamp, 2005, pp. 2-3).

Case: in May last year, England has changed the law on organ donation after death. Until
now, there was the so-called ‘opt-in’ system, where people had to explicitly sign up to the
donor register in order to donate their organs after they die. This has changed to an ‘opt-out
system’, where pretty much everyone (see exceptions on the NHS website) is by default a
donor and people have to explicitly withdraw from the register.

Applied ethics deals with questions such as:

 Is the change in the organ donation law warranted?
 Is the opt-out system a better and morally adequate system?
 Does this system of organ donation secure people’s consent and does it respect
their autonomy?

c) Normative ethics is concerned with questions about what is right and wrong, what makes
actions right or wrong, and how we should act.

Case: You are on a walk and you see something incredible. A trolley is heading speedily
towards 5 workers that are on the track who have their back towards the trolley and are
working away with their headphones on. You also see that there’s a lever you could pull to
switch the tracks the trolley is on – unfortunately, there’s 1 worker on the other track. If you
switch the path of the trolley, you will kill the 1 worker but the other 5 will be saved.

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Normative ethics deals with questions such as:
 Should you pull the lever, switch the tracks, and have the 1 worker killed to save
the other 5?
 And, importantly, why should you pull or not pull the lever?
 What makes one action course of action right and another one wrong?

The main theories in normative ethics in Western philosophy:

 consequentialism: actions are right or wrong in accordance with the kind of
consequences they bring for everyone affected (utilitarianism is a form of
consequentialism).
 deontology: focus on duties and deontic categories (what’s permitted, required,
forbidden) and claims that there are constraints on actions regardless of the
consequences they bring.
 virtue ethics: centred on the kind of persons we should be and on character, rather
than the rightness and wrongness of actions per se.
 ethics of care: emphasises that the importance of human relationships and the idea of
connectedness or interdependence between us.

2. Utilitarianism

To begin to see the appeal of the type of theory that utilitarianism is, think about the
following cases:
 Fatima and Micah have been good friends for a while. Fatima tells Micah something
really private, asking him to not share it with anyone. However, one evening Micah is
talking to another friend and he tells him Fatima’s confession. Fatima overhears the
conversation and gets very upset and starts crying. She feels hurt for quite a while
after this incident.
 Sandra is heading into town to buy herself a new coat. Her old coat is fine, but she has
seen one in a shop and she couldn’t get it out of her mind – it’s quite expensive, but
she has some money left over from her salary. As she’s walking to the shop, she sees
a volunteer raising funds for the Against Malaria Foundation. She has heard of this
foundation – it’s highly reliable and highly effective. The volunteer asks he if she
would like to donate to the foundation. Sandra is torn – she has the extra money, but
she really wants that coat…she’s been working hard and she deserves a treat. But that
money could literally save lives, if she donates it instead. After some deliberation, she
decides to donate all that extra money instead of buying the coat.
Why do we think that Micah did the wrong thing and Sandra did the right thing? Does it have
anything to do with the consequences of their actions…?

Consequentialism is a theory in normative ethics which evaluates actions based on their

consequences.

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism which tells us to assess the value of

consequences in terms of their total utility – the right action is the action that produces the
most overall utility (for everyone affected).

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Utility = a measurement of how well people’s lives are going for them
Utility = happiness; well-being; welfare

Mill tells us: “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest
Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” (Mill, 1998, p. 55)

3. Bentham’s Hedonism

Utility = happiness = balance of pleasure over pain (hedonism)

The utility of an action = the amount of pleasure it would produce - the amount of pain it
would produce

The felicific (hedonic) calculus:

 pleasures and pains can be measured;
 the value of any pleasure or pain is determined by its duration and its intensity;
 for future actions, we think also of the probability of the action’s bringing about that
pleasure or pain.
Example: Micah and his friend got, in total, 20 units of pleasure by sharing Fatima’s secret
(duration = 5 min.) X (intensity = 2). Fatima got 300 units of pain (duration = minimum 60
min.) X (intensity = 5).
 20 (units of pleasure) – 300 (units of pain) = -280 (utility of the action) – the action is
WRONG! (in accordance with our intuitions!)
Objection: ‘This is a view worthy only of pigs, since pushpin is considered just as good as
poetry’: i.e. is there no better life for humans but the life of pleasure, just like the life of a
pig? (example: Haydn versus the oyster (Crisp, 1997, p. 24))

4. Mill’s Hedonism

BUT the duration and intensity of pleasure aren’t the only things that matter – the nature of
the pleasure matters too, when it comes to its value (quality, not just quantity).

Mill makes a distinction:

 Higher pleasures (Haydn’s pleasures; reading Dostoyevsky)
 Lower pleasures (the oyster’s pleasures; eating sweets)

The life of the oyster is not enough for a being capable of higher pleasure!

Q: How do we know which pleasures are higher and which are lower?
A: The competent judge test:

“If one of the two [pleasures] is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed
so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater

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amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which
their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a
superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small
account.” (Mill, 1998, p. 56)

5. Objections

Objection 1: is Mill still a hedonist after all, if he believes that the quality of pleasure also
matters? If pleasure is the only thing that is valuable surely the more pleasure something
produces the better that thing is and that can eventually outweigh higher pleasures.

Reply: Mill is moving away from the Benthamite view – yes, pleasure is the only valuable
thing, but how valuable it is is determined by the quality of pleasure too, not only by its
intensity and duration.

A deeper worry here: what makes something a higher rather than a lower pleasure? If it’s
something like nobility (reading Dostoyevsky is more noble than eating sweets), then isn’t
that nobility valuable in itself too?

Objection 2: ‘the experience machine’

“Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired.
Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel
you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the
time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug
into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences? (…) Of course, while in the
tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think that it's all actually happening (…) Would
you plug in?” (Nozick, 1973, pp. 42-43)

Alternatives to hedonism:
 Desire-satisfaction theories: well-being consists of the fulfilment or satisfaction of
one’s desires.
 Objective list theories: well-being consists of having some objective goods in one’s
life (e.g. autonomy, friendship, pleasure etc.)
(see Crisp (1997, ch. 3) or Mulgan (2013, ch. 4) if you are interested)

Discussion tasks: please work on the discussion tasks and think of any questions that you
have about the lecture – we will discuss all of that in the live session!

Discussion task 1: which life would you choose, Haydn’s or the oyster’s, and why?
Discussion task 2: can you find any problems with the ‘competent judge’ test?
Discussion task 3: would you plug into the experience machine? Why or why not?